Anyone who bought a Wii U at launch didn’t get to play games much on that first day. The reason being Nintendo rolled out a massive day one system update, which took several hours to download. It was painful, and regrettable on Nintendo’s part, but it’s far from a problem that has been fixed.

If you go out and purchase a Wii U today, you still need to apply that huge patch. And according to Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime, it’s going to continue to be part of the setup process for many months to come.

The system update will eventually be integrated into the Wii U firmware and ship with the machine, but Nintendo is in no rush to do that. Reggie says that the firmware only gets updated after a few months of the patch being available to Wii U owners as a download. He estimates that means Spring 2013 will be the earliest hardware will ship with it pre-installed. In other words, the Wii U will continue to require the system update be applied until at least March next year, maybe later.

Hopefully, Nintendo has learned a lesson from launch day and realizes that come Christmas morning its servers are going to be hit very hard again. Unless they want the system update taking several hours on December 25, extra capacity needs to be put in place for all the kids hooking up the console that day.

If you’re still sitting on the fence over whether to invest in the Wii U or not, this is very good reason to wait until next Spring. By then the firmware will be updated, supplies will have caught up with demand, and hopefully there will be a few more must have games available or at least confirmed.